Centipedal Focres
by Salatrel
Summary: Mulder meets his match


The X Files: Centipedal Forces

by [Salatrel][1]

Disclaimer: Mulder and all his buddies belong to Chris Carter and 1013. The centpede lives in my basement and belongs to itsself. Its name is Monsieur Ugly, and every so often it likes to lurk near the disk drive of my old computer, preventing me from playing any games that use floppies.

Apologies: I know a lot of people *coughmothercough* have centipede phobias. I will take no responsibility from any panic attacks.

* * *

The alarm rang, blasting Mulder out of his dream with darts of beeping electronic hell. Bleary eyed, he rubbed the back of his neck, where it ached from sleeping on a couch for God knows how many years. _Got to remember to go shopping for a bed sometime,_ he thought to himself, just as he did every morning. And just as he did every morning, he glanced at the clock, decided he still had another hour before he had to show up at the J. Edgar Hoover building, decided against allowing himself time to eat or make sure his tie matched his coat, hit the pause button, and went back to sleep.

o{{{{{

When he woke up again the centipede was on the wall across the room. He closed his eyes, shook his head. _I'm still dreaming. There is no centipede on my wall._ But when he looked again, there it was, staring back at him. Moving slowly, he picked up one shoe from the floor, aimed carefully, and threw it, praying for a clean hit. No luck. The shoe hit the wall inches away from the offending creature, causing it to scutter down the wall, hit the floor, and run for shelter- apparently shelter near Mulder. He screamed in terror as the monster ran at him, all legs and antennae. Stepping backward, he slipped on a bit of pizza left on the floor and wiped out. His last thought after he banged his head on a coffee table was, _Next time the Lone Gunmen come over, I've got to make them clean up after themselves._

o{{{{{

Mulder regained consciousness several minutes later. The centipede was no where to be seen, and Langley was sitting on the couch, poking him with his foot. Mulder sat up, alarmed. "Where's the centipede?" he yelled. "And what the hell are you doing in here?"

"What centipede?" Langley said nonchalantly. "I don't see any centipede."

Shaking his head groggily, Mulder said, "It was on the wall. Then it ran right at me. It was huge. And so many legs..." He shuddered in horror. "I'm scared."

"God, Mulder. It's just a centipede. It can't hurt you. You've got to outweigh it by... um... a lot."

"But it's really gross. And why are you in my apartment anyway?" 

"I was bored. The door was open. I walked in. Oh, yeah, and I think there's a vast conspiracy aimed against you. Aliens and stuff. Oh SH--!" The centipede ran across the floor right by his feet. Mulder jumped onto the couch, where he crouched, shaking. Langley fainted dead away.

o{{{{{

Mulder looked down from his perch on the sofa as the centipede crawled over Langley's outstretched hand. The Lone Gunman lay prostrate in front of the door, his black-rimmed glasses askew. It had been fifteen minutes since he fainted, and he hadn't moved yet. Mulder was getting worried. He was just about to overcome his terror and try to wake him up when his telephone rang. By hopping from couch to coffee table to bookcase, Mulder was able to reach the phone with out touching the floor where the dreaded centipede lurked. With one trembling hand, he picked up the receiver.

"Mulder?" Scully sounded obscenely calm.

"Scully. Oh God, Scully, please help me. It's killed Langley. It's hiding now, but it'll come after me. It's huge, maybe three inches long."

Mulder could almost hear his partner roll her eyes. "Stop. You're babbling. Now what three inch long giant killed Langley and will come after you?"

"The centipede!" Mulder was almost crying. "It's hiding under his hand!"

Scully sighed. "You're three hours late for work. Skinner's going to kill you. _I'm_ going to kill you. And we're supposed to be in Milwaukee by four o'clock. Can you get over this infantile fear and come to work? Please?"

"If only I could. But it's three inches long! And between me and the door! I can't get out!"

"Hold on, Mulder." Scully said, sounding defeated. "I'm coming over."

"Thank you Scully. Thank-" The bookcase on which Mulder stood, never meant to support much weight, collapsed under him. He fell to the ground among broken shelves and pornographic videos. The phone crashed to the ground inches away from his ear. Half a second later, the receiver fell, hitting Mulder between the eyes. The centipede crawled out from under Langley's hand and right up to Mulder's face. Its legs waved a perky "Hi there!" Mulder's eyes rolled back into his head as he passed out.

o{{{{{

"Oh my God!" Scully gasped as she walked into the chaos of toppled furniture and prostrate bodies. She'd had to push hard to open the door; now she could see why. Langley had been in the way. He was now crumpled in a heap behind the open door. Mulder lay on a mountain of video tapes, some still wrapped in the plain brown paper they'd been sent in. The centipede he'd spoken of was no-where to be seen. After waking Langley with a glass of water on the head and dispatching him to his parents' basement or whatever rock he spent his time under, Scully tended to her fallen partner. She led him staggering to the couch, where she put ice on his bruises and stroked his hair to calm him down. When he appeared lucid, she asked him the question that had been pressing on her mind since she walked into the apartment- "What the hell happened here?"

Mulder, considerably calmed down, repeated the story he'd told her on the phone. "And after I fell off the bookshelf, it came right up to me. It was mocking me, Scully! It was laughing at me!" He looked at her with those puppy-dog eyes. _God, he looks like Queequeg,_ she thought.

"Don't be silly, Mulder. It was probably as scared of you as you were of-"

"Aiiiieeeeee!" Mulder screamed in horror. _That was the girliest scream yet!_ Scully followed the direction his trembling finger pointed to a rather large, brown and yellow striped, and decidedly non-terrifying centipede running across the room.

"That's it? That's the horrible centipede you were telling me about?" Scully asked incredulously. Mulder cowered and nodded. Scully rolled her eyes, walked into the center of the room, and stepped on the centipede.

Mulder stared at her, shocked. "That's it? You're not going to pity me for the hours of terror it put me through? You're not going to hold me tenderly as I recover from my ordeal?"

Scully stood still, cocking her head as if she were honestly considering it. After a while, she turned to Mulder. "No." she said matter of factly. "It was not such a terrifying centipede. Quite anticlimactic, really, after that phone call. And besides, we have a plane to catch. So put on a tie- No, not that one." she corrected as Mulder picked a particularly heinous one off of the arm of his couch. Continuing, she said, "And let's go."

"Don't I even get a hug?"

But Scully was already out the door, leaving a three inch long dead centipede squished in the carpet and Mulder staring sadly after her.

THE END

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